Hey, do you want to read about voting? Neither do I! You can read it first.

This is less likely to shame me into voting than it is to make me go to their office a throw a brick through the window. It is worse news that some company I have never heard of has a record of my votes than the content of the record.
But this came addressed to my sister, Saginaw. I was sent a weird call where the speaker reminded me that I told them, who I have never heard of, that I was going to drive to the polling location early in the morning to cast my vote, even though I voted last time at 5:30pm, cannot drive legally and never told anybody anything. They found me at a Madison Connecticut telephone number but would not let me vote in Madison because my non-driver id card still says New Haven on it. I am sure you care. I appreciate it.

Hey just checkin’ in. Ya votin’? Hope you’re votin’. Heard you weren’t votin’. Ya know that’s below average? Not sayin’ it’s bad but… just sayin’. It’s bad. Okay gotta go. _{Probably not goin’.}

For my older brother Cochise, who has not lived here in thirteen years, I got to meet a woman wearing sunglasses and ludicrously bright lipstick at my front door. In retrospect I imagine the exchange might have gone like this:

hi we’re working to build support for ted kennedy jr. can we count on your support this november?
who is we? I just see you here
we are the committee to elect ted kennedy junior and we are hoping we can count on your support at the polls this november. We’re just passing out literature right now
literature? is he an author?
no Ted Kennedy Junior is running for State Senate and hopes that-
oh another kennedy
yes he is the son of the late ted kennedy
so he is qualified based on that?
no he is qualified because etc etc etc as you can read in the literature
i have just remembered i can’t read
that’s OK! Ted Kennedy Jr has worked tirelessly for the rights of the disabled can we depend on your support?
He needs my disabled support to fight for the disabled?
the people’s voice matters and we can’t do it without you
why aren’t I running, then?
this is america. if you believe in yourself you can do anything. Have you considered offering us your support?

but in actuality I went to special education for eight years and the Connecticut Department of Developmental Services for more years afterward, and I dealt with staff who talked like that so frequently I cannot even imagine a hypothetical exchange in which they did not have some condescending phony-optimistic reply for everything. When you work for a political campaign you are trained that no potential voter is too dumb. You cannot risk interpreting the dopiest question on the planet as a joke, because somebody who asks a stupid question sincerely is more likely to believe their vote counts and to feel special when some creep from a campaign pesters them at home, whereas somebody who is so disgusted by the process as to deliberately abuse campaign workers is likely a lost cause.

Ehhh
after 16 years of being moderately aware of the political situation I have observed that at every election, the two controlling parties and their news-slaves put forth the story about how high the “stakes” are and who stands to gain/lose “control” of this or that house. But regardless of who wins, the same stuff doesn’t get done. My optimism was artificially propped up by the people i was aware of in 2008 and nothing changed after that either, except that I stopped being able to distinguish my “friends” online from the banner ads that I had only just found a reliable way of blocking. So how are there people two-to-three times my age who still act like this is an urgent situation year after year? It just starts to look like the two sides are useless but at odds on purpose so that people focus on the bickering re:nonsense and ignore the horrid rubbish both ends agree on, like getting into undeclared wars, using robots to kill in wars that are even undeclareder, supporting allies who kill indiscriminately with and without robots so long as those allies promote American commercial interests, sometimes within confinement of a wall that they themselves built, monitoring citizens, fric-a-fracking, propping up obsolete industries, outsourcing the ones that are still profitable, and on and oh. What do people criticize President Barack Obama for? Wearing a light brown suit. Calling some jackass celebrity a jackass. Having a middle name. Taking away Our Guns despite not having done a ding dang thing to that end.

That should do it. The S here looks too much like a 5, though, making this wall into a buzzfeed headline. 5 TOP WARS you don’t own but should!

And meanwhile, the news media, our actual governing body… if you want to complain about them rushing to declare a winner before all votes have been counted, they declared Hillary Clinton the next US president the instant Obama was inaugurated, if that late. It doesn’t matter who wins, so we might as well announce it eight years in advance. Although that’s no reason we can’t keep tittering excitedly about it for the next 96 months.
2018 addendum: and they were still convinced that was going to happen until up to about ten minutes before it didn’t. And I think what happened instead is ultimately a consequence of these same systems!
Hey look this potential candidate that is not part of our pre-written outline has passion on an issue! Let’s laugh at it until it cries. We need to eliminate anyone with actual emotions or the potential for shame from the herd. Need more smirking dead-eyed married couples with inherited nonpinions STAT. Get pictures of the kids, too. And a dog that they didn’t have prior to entering politics, GREAT. This is just irrelevant enough to be crucial. No kids, no dog, no service.

And the crummy debates are always closely monitored. you get 30 seconds to answer, “let’s move to the next question.” NO! If they have more to say, let them say it, and let them address each other. Are we electing a governor or a game show host? We probably know more about Louie Anderson’s background than that of Tom Foley, the challenger to Connecticut governor Dan Malloy. And when one brings up a point that your preplanned questions do not ask about, for beet’s sake ask that question. “My opponent is saying things about me that just aren’t true.” Things like what? Oops no time. And neither protests because neither really cares beyond saying their scripted lines.

Look at these yahoos. These guys are chum buddies. One of them HAS to be in charge from now on. I don’t believe for T seconds that anything major is going to improve based on one being elected. We just choose what we want to get worse slower.

They both own boats and devised a scheme to make boat ownership a bigger campaign issue than actual campaign issues (the campaign issues being “taxes.” They “mix it up” by sometimes talking about taxes first and boats second). They probably own paintings of boats. They probably own paintings of their own boats, which are then displayed on the boats. No boat, no ugly white baseball cap, no service.
Even if I had never seen them before I would feel like I had seen them before.

It is true, the taxes in Connecticut are nasty. But I do not trust this guy to reduce them in a way that will provide a net benefit. He wants to be in charge of a whole state (admittedly, a tiny one) and all he has is “I have a plan to cut taxes and create jobs.” Oh so? This is literally Mitt Romney’s platform from two years ago. He could have lost the republican primary election to a parrot trained to say “tax cuts” and “job creators” if the target voters were not likely to perceive a red, yellow and green candidate as gay or Mexican*.
(those are actually the colors of several countries in South America but everything south of real “America” is Mexico to the sort of person receptive to this pitch)

Even with Zob on his side it didn’t work.

can you believe it, somebody drawing this pathetic X over the donkey silhouette on a cheap printout at an institution of supposedly higher learning didn’t clinch the deal either.

the most effective anti-democrat promotion I saw was something they made themselves. Vote or DIE. Or maybe this means Vote AND die.

Every time: One oaf says “I’m going to lower taxes and protect your guns” and the other says “we’re going to FUND services and protect the environment or or whatever you want me to do, I swear.” They promise impossible outcomes, so then at the next election whichever side lost then can claim the winner LIED. Candidate advertisements, when they give information at all, are the equivalent of saying to a child “I have a plan to push back bedtimes, make the bath cuts permanent and give you candy for dinner.” There are consequences to these actions and only an undeveloped fickle mind would fall for it. Not only do people fall for it, they fall for it over and over again, despite rising evidence of the consequences. They fall for it as a matter of personal principle and are more motivated to vote and squawk about it through falling for it than people who realize it is rubbish, because the opposition’s broken magic tricks are less impressive and no more varied. “I’m going to protect the environment, control guns, hold the banks accountable…” Or in other words “If I elected I pledge to give you a bigger bedroom, make dogs stop barking at you and drive you to school instead of making you take the bus.” More responsible sounding but unlikely to be delivered.

HEY did ya vote yet? Hope so! Heard ya didn’t. Say could ya help me? I think I’m stuck.

You cannot save the economy just by cutting taxes and you cannot save the world just by raising taxes and throwing money at issues. This year the incrumbent democrab Malloy did not even bother to say what he was going to do or already did. He just pointed at his opponent and said “this guy is a scumbag.” Or rather some other voice said “this guy is a scumbag” and then the actual candidate said “I’m me and I approved this message.” It would be nice to believe that our governor was busy actually governing and had no time to contribute to messages beyond saying that he approved one, but his use of the “I approved this message” tag shows what an unthinking imbecile he is. Show me the poll that shows voters demand that their candidates say those exact words. Nobody does. Nobody cares. Nobody notices when they do not hear it. Even candidators who say their OWN messages have to remind me that they approve what they just said. Candidates in USAmerica elections are legally required to include proof that their campaign authorized its own ads, and for good reason, but not to use that exact wording. They just do it because they have no will or desire to do anything but what the person from their party before them did. I have been conditioned through my upbringing and preference in media influences to illogically believe democrats are usually right, and have an unshakable subconscious belief in that, just as I have a subconscious illogical belief that Jesus Herbert Walker Christ really doesn’t want people mentioning him, and that he knows, out of many billions, who is doing so and how often. If that is the case he can send me a vain name-taker report card.

Jon Stewart, who I hated in 2000 and came to appreciate, was also with me through the past gang of elections. Even when the people he likes get hired, the same nothing goes on occurring. How can he still believe in this donkey vs elephant, red vs blue rubbish? He was the lone “late night funnyman” who seemed to legitimately care about the state of this country, and not just go with its flow for fresh joke setups.
And you can say “but his JOB is to tell jokes!” but he acts like it isn’t! Unless somebody challenges him, in which event he says “ey I’m on Comedy Central! The same network as Battlebots! I don’t know nuttin’.” Battlebots was canceled in 2002, to give you an idea how long Stewart has had that excuse.
And you can say “we talk about blue vs red because no other colors get to this stage!” But we don’t let them! This isn’t Double Dare. The world doesn’t start with just two opposing sides (and I doubt the geriatrics in congress would be able to break enough water balloons in 60 seconds to fill a cup past the red line).

The presence of independent candidates in minor elections creates a false impression that these opportunities are out there and not taken. These independents are exceptions, and in races that are monitored by national media, exceptions are caught early and are the first ones to go.

Halten Sie! We interrupt your regular programming to bring you an important update: 6. Why we couldn’t have crammed this six into a smaller part of the screen without interrupting or, if this 6’s contract requires it be fullscreen, shown you it during the preceding hour of scheduled, election-soaked news programming is oops here’s another update:

We’ve interrupted the only show on broadcast television you actually watch with this big old map on our Connecticut affiliate even though Connecticut isn’t actually important enough to be colored on our map! Now back to your common rubbish.

Must… get to polls! Must return… to polls! Must… replenish… my strength…